CH 5

As a female student in Geological Engineering, it was a normal occurrence to go out in the field. They would go out, practice what they learned and work with a team to survey. This was the case that happened to Lian Ru Ning. After spending a lot of time surveying, she would gradually be physically weaker when she faced the zombies.

“I can’t run anymore. . .” Running with nothing but pure will, Lian Ru Ning looked at the approaching figure. The choice between life and death danced in her mind, powering her fight or flight response.

In the end, her desire to survive overpowered her thoughts to give up and die. She grit her teeth and turned her head towards the mountain.

If it was the usual mountain road, Lian Ru Ning may still have a chance, but she barely had any physical strength left. It was clear that she’ll have trouble climbing.

Suddenly, her foot slipped that caused her entire body to dive on the mud. The thick gravel scratched her palms during her fall.

She was originally still a distance away from the zombie, but because of this, the zombie caught up to her. She turned her head and watched as the nauseating face rush towards her. Feeling the fear, she closed her eyes shut and awaited for death.

Just then, she heard screaming followed by bashing sounds that penetrated her ears, she could hear strange cries from the zombie. Lain Ru Ning seemed to have felt something and when she opened her eyes, she saw a figure holding a meter long wooden stick, desperately slamming it on the zombie’s head.

The zombie tried to fight back, but the figure was relentless. It attacked again and again, bashing the zombie’s chest before kicking it away.

“Climb up quickly!” The person yelled at Lian Ru Ning, who regained her senses after a few seconds before finally running up the mountain.

The zombie got up from the ground once again and chased the two, fortunately, it was having trouble moving forward due to the steep climb. If it weren’t for this, there was no way the zombie would let its prey get further and further away.

Lian Ru Ning’s stamina has reached its limit, and if she were to run any further, she probably won’t be able to move her legs tomorrow. She staggered before falling on the ground, she was dizzy and in the brink of losing consciousness.

Hearing the movement behind her, Hao Jian turned her head and called out to Lian Ru Ning with a sense of urgency in her voice, “Get up and continue running.”

Lian Ru Ning shook her head, her vision was getting dimmer and she felt that the air in her lungs were so cold that it burned.

Hao Jian circled back and went to check. After making sure that the zombie won’t be able to catch up to them in the mean time, she no longer forced Lian Ru Ning to get up. When she reached for the water in her backpack, she realized that the blood-stained stick was still on her hand. She was gripping it tightly while her hands were shaking.

It was her first time fighting against zombies and her experience told her why the zombies in games and movies were so terrible. The zombie didn’t know what pain and exhaustion was. If she hadn’t tried her best to beat the zombie’s head again and again to stop it from attacking again, she might’ve been caught by it and be infected!

Although her experience didn’t affect her heart so much because of the games she’s played, the relief of escaping death still swept through her body.

Throwing away the wooden stick, she stabilized her mind and took out her water bottle and shook it to ensure that it still had water, “Are you still alive?”

Lian Ru Ning moved a bit, and finally her mind calmed down. Although her throat and lungs still burned, they weren’t enough to cause her shock and pass out.

“Let’s take a break, here, drink some water.”

Lian Ru Ning saw the water as if she saw the life-saving straw, grabbed it and took a big swig. After a sigh of relief, she drank it once more until it bottomed out before she felt alive again.

“. . .” Hao Jian looked at the empty water bottle, feeling a little distressed about her water.

“Thank you.” Lian Ru Ning raised her eyes and expressed her heartfelt thanks. However, after finding out that she had finished drinking someone else’s water, she became embarrassed, “I was so thirsty that I drank it accidentally, I. . .”

Hao Jian was silent for a moment, then placed her water bottle back, “Nevermind, I don’t don’t plan to spend my whole life relying on a bottle of water, besides, I can just refill it after drinking.” This was what she told herself.

“Thank you.” Lian Ru Ning said again.

Hao Jian blinked, seeming a little confused.

“This is me thanking you for saving me.” Lian Ru Ning explained. With her eyes regaining its clarity, a smile flashed in her eyes as she thanked Hao Jian.

Her smile reflected in Hao Jian’s eyes, causing ripples in her heart.

Suddenly feeling bad, she cried out in her heart, “System, did you make a ghost?”

The system feeling very innocent, “The system cannot interfere with the host’s actions, nor can it distort the host’s thoughts.”

“You’re planted in my mind, so I remain skeptical!”

The system quiet downed, no longer arguing with Hao Jian.

“Can you walk?” Hao Jian looked into the distance and found the zombie struggling to climb up the mountain and chase after them. However, it stopped on a very steep slope but was unable to climb by a large margin, now trying to walk over the slope in small and broken steps.

Without taking her eyes off the zombie, Hao Jian stretched her hands out to help Lian Ru Ning up. Lian Ru Ning’s legs were still weak, but fortunately, she didn’t fall back down because of Hao Jian’s help.

When Lian Ru Ning stood up, her eyes inevitably landed on the zombie. Her Heart almost jumped out her chest and she wanted to run away, but before she could, she found herself in the arms of someone and couldn’t move. Hao Jian’s calm voice came to her ear, “Don’t worry, it won’t catch up for a while.”

Lain Ru Ning discovered that the zombie was indeed having trouble climbing the slope despite walking for a few minutes, as Hao Jian said.

Staring at the zombie for a while, Lian Ru Ning said in a daze, “Let’s run away if it doesn’t catch up!”

Hao Jian Naturally didn’t object. She picked up the stick that’s the only thing the could make as her weapon and walked to the opposite direction with Lian Ru Ning. There was a zombie in the southwest so it was impossible for them to go down the mountain from there anymore.

While walking, Hao Jian suddenly remembered that the zombie was wearing the same sweatpants Lian Ru Ning was wearing. She couldn’t help but guess, “Do you know that zombie?”

“That was a zombie?” Lian Ru Ning asked rhetorically.

After a while, Lian Ru Ning replied, “That was my classmate.”

Lian Ru Ning was a student of the Department of Geology in the School of Earth Sciences and Geological Engineering of Southern City University. She was supposed to have participated in a summer camp organized by professors of the Department of Geology to study geology in various places.

During the 15-day summer camp, a total of six students were assigned to Fangxie Mountain here. And this place is located in the middle of rolling mountains. It took an hour using a car to get to a village. It can be said that the village is located in the middle of nowhere.

In addition to it being sparsely populated, it also has extremely poor signal. Fortunately, Lian Ru Ning’s purpose was to learn and the absence of the Internet will not make her uncomfortable.

During the day, she and her classmates followed their professor to various activities like rock climbing, surveying rugged rocks, and collecting data. In the evening, they returned to their camp to sort out the information they collected and finish their homework assigned by the professor.

Four days ago, she received a call from home. She originally agreed with her family that she would call every three days to report her safety, but the promised call came a bit early. But because of the bad signal, she couldn’t clearly hear what was going on the other line. She became a little uneasy despite having experienced this several times.

She planned to enter the village to make a phone call to her parents but the professor said, “It will be over in two days. This car has just enough fuel to drive us to the nearest gas station. So, just bear with it!”

However, no one could think that when they finished their survey and embark on their journey to return, the car broke down near the village. Seeing that it was getting late, a group of people had to enter the village to spend the night and find someone to repair their car.

She found some signal in the village to call her family but found out that she couldn’t connect the call at all, no one also responded when she used the chat application and sent a message. The only thing she can receive was news that several good friends of hers warned her not to return to Southern City three days ago.

She had no idea what was going on. She was losing contact on the people around her one after another, slowly making her uneasy. The next day, when the professor came back and said that the car hadn’t been repaired, she became even more anxious. But if the car wasn’t repaired, they couldn’t leave. There was no quick fix.

When night came, she woke up because a dog’s barking in the village that made her panic a little. She got up to drink water and saw the professor wandering in the yard alone through the light in front of the door. A male student walked up to the professor and asked, “Professor, why don’t you rest? It’s getting late.”

All of a sudden, the professor rushed towards the male student and bit down on his neck.

The screams of her male classmate overpowered her own screams. The noise woke up their other classmates. They walked out of their rooms one after another and asked, “What happened?”

“Help!” The male student cried for help. Lian Ru Ning’s other classmates were strong and sturdy that when they went forward and were stunned at what they saw. They pulled the two apart but the professor didn’t stop just because he was pulled away while blood gushed out of the male student’s neck.

Frightened and dazed, Lian Ru Ning came back to her senses. She looked at her professor and classmates who were going crazy outside and had a thought in her heart which urged her to leave. So she packed up her things, quietly came out of the room and took advantage of the chaos. Her classmates had no time to mind her as she left, quickly blending into the night.

Unfortunately, some of her classmates discovered her unusual behavior and chased after her, “Ru Ning, where are you going? It’s dangerous at night!”

Her classmate soon caught up to her but fortunately, he just followed her instead of stopping her, “Why are you running?”

“I want to go home!” Lian Ru Ning responded.

“The car will be repaired tomorrow. By the way, we don’t know what went wrong with the professor, Ziming is also injured. Let’s go find a doctor nearby!”

“The professor is not crazy.” Lian Ru Ning suddenly thought of the short video that a good friend of hers sent her a few days ago. The people in it were exactly the same as the professor!

At that time, she thought it was those fake videos sent by her parents so she didn’t take it to heart. Until now, she felt that things might not be that simple!

Her classmate didn’t listen to what she said, but saw a small clinic with its lights still on and hurriedly ran to knock on the door. Lian Ru Ning however didn’t stop and just walked carefully along the road.

By the time she saw her classmate again, it had lost its mind and ran towards Lian Ru Ning like crazy. She knew she was no match for such a big man so the only thing she could do was to escape.